Deck Nine Games Explains Life Is Strange: Before the Storm’s Three Episode Length

August 7, 2017Written by Elizabeth Henges

In a recent GameSpot interview, developer Deck Nine Games went into great detail about the upcoming prequel Life is Strange: Before the Storm. There’s a lot to wonder about Chloe’s story before Max re-enters her life, and the developers answer questions about the game’s plot, mechanics, and more.

Regarding the prequel’s shorter length (Before the Storm is three episodes while the original is five):

When we were first talking to Square about what we would do with the IP and what kind of a story we would tell in Arcadia Bay, we weren’t looking at a particular length over another. We were contemplating stories of all shapes and sizes. What really it came down to is: the story we found that, for Chloe in this chapter of her life, it genuinely felt like about a three-episode story.

Here’s some information about how the game will work without having the first title’s time travelling mechanics and how that’ll affect the branching narrative:

We’ve designed the concept to be a very branching in its complexity, and the farther along you go in the story the more and more different sort of scenes you might see versus what I might see. Based on that, we always focus on the relationships that you’ve developed with the characters versus their relationships that I’ve developed. So I think there is a lot of replayability in this experience. I am curious about the ways in which Max, as a character, is prone to second-guess, is prone to kind of rewind and try something else. And I think that encourages trying different solutions; where Chloe just barrels through a problem, she’s just going to deal with whatever the aftermath could be.

Finally, here’s some insight on whether or not to play the original Life is Strange before the prequel:

It’s really intentional for us that no matter which title you come to first, you can play through it, enjoy it, and then go play the other title. Nothing in our game will spoil anything from the original game.